Popular, raunchy book series and the fan fiction debate

Perhaps it was inevitable in the e-reader age: The latest literary sensation is a steamy erotic novel called “Fifty Shades of Grey.” While the book is raising eyebrows for its wild themes, it’s almost as shocking the admitted “Twilight” connections aren’t drawing more ire.

Author E L James, a former London television executive, first published “Grey” through a small Australian press. But it’s currently No. 1 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the New York Times (combo print and e-book) lists, and a division of Random House recently won a bidding war for rights to a trilogy of books. Expect to see a new run of 750,000 “Grey” paperbacks in stores soon.

The book has strong sexual themes, summed up by one reviewer: “‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is pornography, plain and simple.” The violent BDSM themes drew a reprimand by Dr. Drew Pinsky on The Today Show, but readers are still downloading.

Both James and her publisher have been open about the fact that the story originally appeared on the site fanfiction.net as a raunchy take on “Twilight,” with characters from Stephenie Meyer’s series. Publishers say “Grey” is a new work and James changed characters and situations. But NPR has more, including a link to a thorough analysis concluding the novel is a close reproduction of the original story, “Master of the Universe.” That makes “Grey” a thinly veiled work of fan fiction.

So while plagiarism is quickly condemned in modern society, blatant derivation is profitable. It’s hard to find people against fan fiction other than some authors (Anne Rice says on her site “I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly…”) and the sales of “Grey” haven’t exactly plummeted on the news.

Where’s the line? Why don’t we care when an author admits to spinning a novel from another? Sure, nothing is truly original, and “Twilight” owes its debt to vampires and werewolves from Dracula to Michael J. Fox. But now we’ve reached a saturation point where we’re just admitting to being borrowers.

What do you think? Does it bother you if the origins of a piece are unoriginal, or do you only care if it’s plagiarized word-for-word?